The Health and Morbidity of Friendly Society Members

Welcome to the webpage for the research project on ‘The health and morbidity of friendly society members in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.  This ESRC-funded project is designed to shed new light on the history of sickness and morbidity in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century.  The main part of the project uses information obtained from the sickness insurance records of the Hampshire and General Friendly Society to examine the sickness claims made by approximately 6,000 individuals over the period from 1868 to 1950.  These data are supplemented by qualitative information obtained from the records of other major British friendly societies, including the Ancient Order of Forester and the Independent Order of Oddfellows.  We hope to shed new light on a wide range of topics including:

  • Changes in the relationship between individual sickness experience and age over the last 150 years
  • The ‘cultural inflation of morbidity’
  • The changing patterns of non-fatal illness among British workingmen
  • The relationship between morbidity and mortality.

 

 

Hampshire Friendly and Foresters' Friendly Society

Source: The image of the Hampshire Friendly Society belongs to the Hampshire Record Office (Winchester) (Reference no. 18M89/21/26) and the AOF images are taken from the FHT Museum and Archive (Southampton).

 

Published work

Martin Gorsky, Bernard Harris and Andrew Hinde 2006 Age, sickness and longevity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: evidence from the Hampshire Friendly Society. Social Science History, 30, 4, 571-600.  On-line abstract, (ISSN: 0145-5532).
Abstract: http://ssh.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/4/571 

Paper: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_science_history/v030/30.4gorsky.pdf 

 

Edwards, C., Gorsky, M., Harris, B. and Hinde, A. 2003 Sickness, insurance and health: assessing trends in morbidity through friendly society records. Annales de Démographie Historique, 2003, 1, 131-167.  On-line abstract, (ISSN: 2701134358).
Abstract: http://www.adh.msh-paris.fr/n1-2003-v04.html#Sommaire

Paper: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=ADH_105_0131 

   

Martin Gorsky and Bernard Harris 2005 The measurement of morbidity in interwar Britain: evidence from the Hampshire Friendly society. In I Borowy (ed.), Health in interwar Europe. Frankfurt: Peter Lang., (ISBN: 3631519486).

http://www.peterlangusa.com/index.cfm?vSiteName=SearchBooksResult.cfm&vID=51948&iAlpha=F&vLang=D&vHR=1&vUR=2&vUUR=8